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Direct Democracy

How Somerville Organized To Win Ballot Question To Divest From Israel

December 2, 2025 Tamar Sarai, Next City. , , , ,
Organizers with Somerville for Palestine hosted a rally outside of City Hall on Nov. 13, demanding that city councilmembers follow the will of voters and pass a resolution to implement a strategy to boycott and divest from Israel within the next calendar year. The rally came after voters in the Massachusetts city’s Nov. 4 election overwhelmingly supported nonbinding Ballot Question 3, also referred to as the “Palestine Solidarity Question,” which asked whether Somerville should divest from companies that “engage in business that sustains Israel’s apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine.”

President Maduro Proposes Commune-Based Electoral System

November 29, 2025 Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , ,
President Nicolás Maduro visited the Simón Bolívar Socialist Commune in Caracas’s 23 de Enero parish Thursday, where he praised Venezuela’s communal democracy as direct and real and called for a new electoral system rooted in the communes. He announced that “starting with the next popular consultation, in addition to the prizes for the most active communes, the most-voted communal circuit in each state will automatically have all seven projects submitted by the community approved”—meaning they will receive state funding.

Mutual Aid Group Strengthens Community, Reframes Problem Solving

November 18, 2025 LibWilliams, Stanwood Camano News. , , ,
Emily “Kimmy” Kim and Mary Ellen Wood have a shared vision to bring grassroots community networks to the Stanwood-Camano area. In March of this year, the Mutual Aid Assembly of Stanwood-Camano was born to bring that vision to life. Kim said the group has hosted about 10 meetings and several events with a focus on working together to solve problems and learn from each other. “We’ve kind of determined that our broad vision is to build grassroots networks of community care through group problem-solving, decision-making and action,” she said.

Somerville For Palestine Initiative Is On November Ballot

October 21, 2025 Phebe Eckfeldt, Workers' World. , , , , , ,
Somerville, Massachusetts - “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” This chant rang out loud and clear at the Somerville for Palestine (S4P) meeting in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Oct. 6, when members and friends learned that 8,000 of their 11,400 petition signatures were legally certified by the Election Commission. The Commission also overruled an objection by the right wing to the ballot initiative. It will be on the ballot in November as Question 3. For the past seven months, 288 volunteers have been canvassing people to sign a petition directing the Somerville City Council to stop using taxpayers’ money to fund Israeli genocide.

Colombian Workers Win Long-Awaited Labor Reform

June 25, 2025 Pablo Meriguet, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
After several months of intense debate, the government of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, achieved a new political victory and a key campaign promise when the legislature approved his long-awaited labor reform bill. Petro had tried on multiple occasions to have the reform passed, but the opposition managed to stop it every time. Undeterred, the president announced a popular referendum so that Colombians could decide on the proposed articles. The call for a popular referendum, which was accompanied by large mobilizations nationwide, turned out to be very controversial.

Dynamic Coalitions: Organizational Solidarity In Practice

June 22, 2025 Ana Inés Heras, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
My name is Ana Inés Heras. I live and work in Argentina, although at different points of my life I also lived abroad. Since 1999 I have been working in several regions of my native country as a National Researcher for the Argentinean Council – CONICET, as a university professor and an activist. The regions we work in and organizations we work with vary over time, since our work is dynamic. Groups and people who reach out to us are integrated into our work over time at different geographical locations in our country (e.g., the North West, the North East, the Southern Andean region). Out of this work, and over the years, I supported the creation of a transdisciplinary and trans-organizational team, which works as a Co-Elaborative Research Hub, on issues related to direct democracy in different types of organizations (e.g., cooperatives, community groups, social movements).

The Need To Protect Direct Democracy

March 12, 2025 Billy Corriher, Governing. , , ,
Direct democracy in America is under attack. That development has been underappreciated as we focus on the vibe shift represented by Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election. Still, it tells us just as much about the strengths and weaknesses of America’s constitutional system. Direct democracy in some form — through citizen initiatives, popular referendums or both — is an option in 26 states and the District of Columbia. Citizens can petition to place statutes or constitutional amendments on the ballot or ask voters to approve or repeal actions of their legislatures.

Ballot Initiatives Activate Voters, Change The Landscape

August 31, 2024 Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, Portside. , , ,
As we head into the Fall and the critical final stage of the 2024 election, a large contingent of voters are grappling with feelings of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment. While the recent shift in the presidential race has helped galvanize a new generation of voters and evoke a sense of hope and excitement, it hasn’t quieted all of the anxieties that have built up over the last several years. We are mobilizing people to vote at a time when more than 80% of adults in the US don’t believe their elected officials care what they think and alarmingly, roughly one-third of Americans say an authoritarian leader or military regime would be a good way of governing.

Federal Court To Decide If Atlanta Voters Could Have A Say On Cop City

December 22, 2023 Cody Bloomfield, Truthout. , , , , ,
A court case heard in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals on December 14, 2023, could have a decisive impact on the legal fight to finally put Cop City on the ballot. If successful, the citizen ballot initiative would put a question to voters about whether to revoke the lease of land to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build the massive militarized police training facility, which has seen grassroots resistance reach a fever pitch this year. In Atlanta, for a citizen ballot initiative to be voted on in a general election, petition gatherers must collect signatures equivalent to 15 percent of active registered Atlanta voters within 60 days.

Direct Democracy And The Need For Physical Space

December 16, 2023 Yavor Tarinski, Resilience. , , ,
Nowadays there is a lot of talk about digital, or e-democracy – focusing on online participation. There is even talk of a so-called Appocracy – civic participation being channeled through smartphone apps. Many see in such means an exit from the deepening crisis of representative “democracy”. Often the reason people give when engaging with such proposals, is valid – people globally are indeed mistrustful towards professional politicians and tend to increasingly absent from the rituals of political representation (such as elections). The problem comes with what they propose as an alternative. The logic behind the supposed digitalization of democracy is based on the misunderstanding of political participation as passive activity, such as consumerism.

The Digital Tools Unlocking Democracy In Our Cities

March 12, 2023 Hollie Russon Gilman and Grace Levin, Next City. , , ,
Digitization. It’s the threat that modern democracies, and especially cities, must solve – at least according to current dialogues on digital regulation. Many of the social and political problems our cities face today have been exacerbated by technology. Social media and other digital tools have increased the spread of misinformation and overall weakened public trust in our civic, social and political institutions. Recent developments in virtual reality and artificial intelligence raise new concerns for issues around surveillance, bias, automation and exploitation, especially with increasing public scrutiny on technology giants like Meta and Google.

Minneapolis Is About To Vote On Whether To Dismantle The Police

October 7, 2021 Logan Carroll, In These Times. , , ,
It was a cool Friday in Minneapolis, made cooler by the shadows of the skyscrapers towering over People’s Plaza. In the brick-lined courtyard between the Hennepin County Government Center and Minneapolis City Hall on September 17, the Yes 4 Minneapolis campaign and its allies held a rally whose purpose had come undone the day before. Yes 4 Minneapolis is working to amend the Minneapolis City Charter by removing a mandate for a mayor-controlled police department with a certain number of officers per resident (0.0017, to be exact). In its place, the amendment establishes a Department of Public Safety under the joint control of the mayor and the 13-member Minneapolis City Council. The radical restructuring would allow for future revisions.

Elections Proved Americans Are Done With The Drug War

November 22, 2020 Lee Camp, Scheer Post. , , ,
Something seismic happened in this election and it has nothing to do with Joe Biden winning. And yes, Joe Biden did indeed win. I’m sorry for those of you Trump fans who believe the election was rigged against him. It simply wasn’t.  Yes, millions of Americans were indeed purged from the voter rolls – but they were mostly people of color. So if MAGA Nation are waiting for those votes to be counted, then Trump will actually do even worse. And I honestly don’t care if you’re thinking, “But I saw a video on Tik-Tok of someone burning a ballot and then smothering it in hot sauce and eating it.”

The Kurdish Freedom Movement, Rojava And The Left

August 1, 2020 Thomas Jeffrey Miley, Middle East Research and Information Project. , , ,
The revolution in the Kurdish region of Syria called Rojava has generated significant enthusiasm among broad segments of the left in Europe and North America. The heroic resistance by Kurdish forces in Kobane, Syria during the siege by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in late 2014 and into early 2015 proved to be a pivotal moment. Images of revolutionary fighters, and particularly of armed women, engaged in a life-and-death struggle, bravely resisting the vicious onslaught by Islamist thugs, caught the attention and imagination of many on the so-called international left.

Nine More Communities Vote To Amend The U.S. Constitution

November 7, 2018 WI United To Amend. , , ,
Madison, WI  – On Tuesday, November 6th, Wisconsin residents in nine communities voted to amend the U.S. Constitution to clarify that only human beings should have inalienable human rights and money is not the same thing as free speech. All referenda passed with overwhelming majorities in three counties: Jackson (69%), Sauk (72%) and Wood (80%); the villages of Readstown (91%), Westfield (87%) and Weston (83%); and the towns of Kickapoo (85%), Rib Mountain (78%) and Vermont (86%). That brings the total to 142 Wisconsin communities that have called for an amendment.
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